Wayfarer
Of course you want to stay
all cozy in the green hills of the shire
but sometimes you must lace up
your hiking boots & and go back
to the stinking swamps of Mordor.
There’s something in your pocket,
some wee but weighty thing
unspeakably shining in the dark,
that you can unpack & drop off
only in the place it was made.
Even then you can barely
let go of it, & in throwing it away
you all but throw yourself away,
so much a part of you it’s become,
& even then you’ll feel it there,
in your pocket still.
29 thoughts on "Wayfarer"
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I love a good hobbit poem! Nicely done!
I think he wins LexPoMo’s best hobbit poem this year. This poem haunts and is universal.
Thanks Linda! You never know, though—I figure Coleman as a fellow Tolkien guy. I wouldn’t put it past him to challenge me in the hobbit space 😏
Thanks Chelsie!
Hauntingly evocative and even personal.
I believe Tolkien would approve.
Thanks Coleman. To paraphrase a credit card ad: What’s in your pocket?
The first two couplets draw you into the adventure as does addressing your reader. I didn’t finish the hobbit—I tried reading it to my kids before bed, but we all fell asleep. We all have those “stones” in our pocket….
Thanks, Kim! The Hobbit was my gateway drug into fantasy and sf books when I was a kid. I didn’t think of it as a metaphor then, just an adventure story, but it comes back to me now and then in surprising ways.
Wonderful — that feeling of something still being with you, my that resonates.
Thanks Bill!
Well, Kevin Nance, this might be one of my favorites! Perfect blend of familiar and mysterious with a twist of spiritual.
On the political side, every day I feel like we are walking in a “stinking swamp.”
Thanks, Sylvia! Yes the swamp is fetid these days.
A magical mystery in this one.
Thanks Pat!
Kevin, the last couplet shined, outstanding – and the lingering spoken is ubiquitous. A tinge of the romantic in this one.
Thanks, Manny!
I just finished another reading of TLOTR.
Wisdom there and in this poem.
Love the last two couplets.
Thanks, Pam! Yes those books are magic, ain’t they? People sometimes talk about them as political allegories for WWII, but I think they also shed light on some complexities of human nature too.
Beautiful! I love the warm, “cozy” start that turns to the “stinking swamps” and how heartfelt the struggle is. So visceral!
Thanks Michele!
You had me with those “stinking swamps” and the “wee but weighty thing” that is “in your pocket still.” A poem from a hobbit’s perspective is brilliant.
Thanks Rosemarie!
While I’m really not a hobbit fan, I see this poem as metaphorical for our own existence on the this Earth rather than Middle Earth. Fine use of couplets, too. Great work, Kevin.
Thanks, Lee! That’s the way I see it too.
I love this! My wifi network is Hobbit House, lol.
Especially delighted by “you can unpack and drop off only in the place it was made.” Tangible and universal.
Thanks Austen! Also good to know you’re a fellow Hobbithead!
Just when you think you’ve extinguished it in the fires of Mordor, you find it right back in the pocket! After all that work.
I was also haunted by this one, so well-expressed.
Exactly, Arwen. We try so hard to rid ourselves of our traumas but the mfs just won’t die.
WOW, some burdens, even when lifted, become forever a part of who we are. GREAT WRITE!